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Comment by kaycebasques | Hacker News Reader

My time, energy, and inner peace is more valuable than the loss I've incurred ($300) and the mental anguish of waiting for hours to get a customer support person to issue me a refund (someone who has probably been instructed to resist giving me back my money)

Vowing to never use their business again (so my loss is limited to a one-time event) and recommending everyone to do the same has worked out pretty well for me --- I can make peace with the experience and we slowly weed out these bad apples from the world

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Also, there are potentially plenty of costs that can't be recouped when a flight gets canceled. I have an 8 day vacation coming up with my lodging and rental car prepaid and non-refundable at this point. Delta has already changed my flight once in a way that would have cost me two days at my destination. I was able to reroute and actually ended up with a better schedule than my original flight but if they cancel or change it again, I might get my $800 back for the plane tickets but could lose thousands on everything else.

Large non-cancelable expenses are probably one area where travel insurance can make sense. When you can mostly unwind things in light of travel disruptions, illness, etc. mostly not. (Or, when you can, maybe make refundable reservations even if there's something of a premium.)

Travel insurance can be bizarrely difficult, though. My travel delay coverage covers "mechanical" issues but not "operational" ones. Plane broke? Covered (if you can get the airline to admit it). Pilot couldn't be found? Not covered. Why the difference? No one knows!

It would be nice to have more consumer advocacy and information in this area. I have had two travel insurance claims and they were both like butter, I easily recovered my extra costs. I stuck with that company, but now their COVID rider doesn't seem very good, so I went with another for an upcoming strip. Some offer "for any reason" upgrades... yeah, it's complicated and not a very friendly place to buy products or understand what they cover.

I rarely buy travel insurance but, last time I did, I bought from American Express which seemed more reputable than some of the ones that came up in search results.

Chargeback works wonders.

They have already determined that they don't care if you fly with them or not, so why not make sure they don't get paid for experience? It is only fair.

This works surprisingly well. At least for Visa. I just initiate the chargeback and they sick their dogs on the vendor.

Wouldnt you get banned from the airline in the future?

wouldn't that not matter if you vow to never fly with them again?

Seems like that would have no impact since they've already vowed to never fly with that airline again anyways

If I have already decided I will never fly with them again it isn't a big deal.

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